The company that provides medical services at the Broome County Jail told employees to falsify medical records in an attempt to pass state accreditation, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday by three former employees who said they were fired because they refused to do.

Correctional Medical Care, Inc., told the three former employees to alter dates on records to make it appear as if inmates had been seen when they were supposed to and had received medication in a timely manner, according to the suit, filed in Broome County Supreme Court.

Many inmates were not seen in a timely manner, were given the wrong medications, were given medications long after they were supposed to receive them or were denied medications, the suit alleges.

The reality of the medical treatment at the jail — "barbarian practices" — would have prevented the jail from being accredited, according to the suit.

"CMC was engaging in the corporate practice of medicine in a manner aimed at keeping its costs as low as possible, regardless of consequences to the inmates," the suit states.

A former director of nursing, a former health services administrator and a former nurse are suing for past and future wages.

The suit lists multiple alleged instances in which inmates were given delayed care or denied care altogether.

Multiple times, nurses would borrow medication from one inmate's supply and give it to another inmate because the process for filling prescriptions was so slow, the suit says.

The suit also alleges the jail had a policy that inmates who were on methadone, an opioid replacement drug, before admission were not allowed to continue taking methadone while in jail.

In one instance, an inmate with a broken arm was denied pain medication, as was an inmate with an amputation, who was also denied other medical care, including visits to a specialist, according to the suit.

As a result, the suit states, the limb became malformed.

Another inmate with Hashimoto's thyroiditis, a condition in which the immune system attacks the thyroid, went weeks without necessary medications, and had "dangerously low" thyroid levels, the suit states.

It isn't the first time CMC has found itself in legal trouble.

In 2014, the company settled with New York State, agreeing to pay $200,000 in connection with an investigation into the deaths of six inmates in five county jails over four years.

Also in 2014, CMC settled for $62,500 with the family of an inmate who died in the jail in 2011. The inmate, Alvin Rios, Jr., was in an "emergent, life-threatening status without appropriate medical attention" before he died, according to a report from the state Commission of Correction, which oversees jails.

Contacted late Tuesday afternoon, CMC did not respond.

The defendants and their lawyer, Ronald Benjamin, will discuss the suit at a press conference Wednesday.